Emergency Care Saves Lives
25x25x25
WHO
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Credits
Initiative aiming to provide training in basic emergency care for 25% of nurses and midwives from 25 countries by the end of 2025.
The Disease Control Priorities project (2018) estimates that more than half of deaths and a third of disability in low- and middle-income countries could be addressed by effective emergency care. Injuries alone killed 4.4 million people around the world in 2019, and constitute 8% of all deaths.
Health emergencies happen every day, everywhere. Emergency care is required to respond to a wide range of conditions in children and adults – including injuries, infections, heart attacks and strokes, asthma and complications of pregnancy.
Emergency care providers save lives. Yet in resource-limited settings, care is often compromised by a lack of training. This can result in a failure to recognize urgency, provide initial appropriate care, and a delay in onward referrals.
The result can be catastrophic, with research showing that over half of all annual deaths, and over a third of disability in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) result from conditions that could be treated by trained emergency care professionals.
The need for high quality training
The workforce is the backbone of any health system, with nurses and midwives playing a key role in the management of emergency medical situations. Yet the availability and quality of emergency care training for these health professionals varies widely– with many countries offering little formal training or none at all. Where courses do exist, materials are often limited in scope, high in cost and unsuitable for use in low-resource settings.
Open-access training course for frontline healthcare providers who manage acute illness and injury with limited resources.
A short course that makes a big difference
Launched in 2016, the Basic Emergency Care (BEC) course was developed by the World Health Organization, the International Committee of the Red Cross and International Federation for Emergency Medicine. It is designed to help health-care workers manage acute life-threatening conditions in any health care facility, anywhere in the world.
Open source and free to access, the course includes a combination of lectures, case scenarios and hands-on skills sessions to teach a systematic (ABCDE) approach to emergency care – with modules focused on life-saving interventions for acutely ill patients suffering trauma, difficulty in breathing, shock and altered mental status.
Today, over 15 000 health care providers in 60 countries have received BEC training. Yet uptake among nurses and midwives – who represent 59% of the global health workforce – is low, with numbers trained estimated at just 25% of total participants.
WHO / Matt Dolan
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Credits
Introducing the 25x25x25 Emergency care initiative
Inspired by members of the WHO Nursing and Midwifery Global Community of Practice, the 25x25x25 initiative is designed to close the training gap among nurses and midwives, with the objective of 25% of nurses and midwives from 25 partner countries having received the training by the end of 2025.
The Initiative will be launched on 7 April 2023 on World Health Day. The first months of the Initiative will be focused on determining which 25 countries will participate.
Criteria for selection will be developed by WHO, with participation organized with the support of national chief nursing and midwifery officers and national professional associations.
Trainings will begin in June 2023 and are set to run until December 2025. While strategies will vary from country to country, the roll-out and scale-up of BEC training will follow the same overarching process:
PHASE 1
Strategic planning
The Initiative team will work closely with in-country partners to develop a tailored needs-based strategy that will guide the roll-out and scale-up of BEC training.
PHASE 2
Training of Trainers
Nominated by the Ministry of Health in each participating country, a local team of course facilitators will receive formal BEC training before being trained as trainers themselves.
PHASE 3
Course delivery
Working to a ratio of six participants to one facilitator, courses will be delivered in accordance with an agreed national plan that systematically covers priority health-care settings.
PHASE 4
Roll-out and scale-up
As the Initiative gains momentum, select course participants will be invited to train as trainers, with each country building a team of trained facilitators (average 24–30 trainers) to sustain and grow course delivery.
PHASE 5
Refresher training
While initial gains in knowledge, skills confidence and self-efficacy can be high – particularly among nurses – refresher training will help ensure improvements are sustained and retained beyond 2025.
